With the advent of the computer age, computer and software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help then write, calculate, organize, prepare presentations, send and receive electronic mail, make music, and the like. For example, modern electronic word processing applications allow users to prepare a variety of useful documents. Modern spreadsheet applications allow users to enter, manipulate, and organize data. Modern electronic slide presentation applications allow users to create a variety of slide presentations containing text, pictures, data or other useful objects.
Documents created by such applications are typically difficult to use on any application other than the application responsible for generating the document. Most computer-generated documents contain many streams of information or data, for example, text, tables, pictures, inserted objects, and the like, but typically the applications generating those documents do not break the documents into individual streams of information. Users often desire to use or manipulate such documents using applications other than the application responsible for generating the document. For example, users often desire to re-use a portion of a document or make a quick change to a portion of a document without having to open the entire document. This is especially the case where documents are stored in shared collections available to multiple users working in a collaborative environment.
There is a need for an improved method and system for managing and using data across different types of applications. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.